A few thoughts on gender equality on the workplace

 am entering dangerous waters here, and I know it.

I am also writing this as a provocation so take it with a pinch of salt.

And let me drop here, right here.

If you want gender equality in the workplace, you don’t need affirmative action. You need mandatory paternity leave. Not the possibility of paternity leave. Make it mandatory. Why?

Because for obvious reasons women do not have a choice, at least for a while, to go on maternity leave. It is about health. So in the end there is always going to be a certain bias towards women in reproductive age. Yes, laws say that it is illegal to discriminate on this basis. But it still happen.

Make paternity leave mandatory, and all of a sudden there is no need to discriminate any more: at the end of the day, if there is the same risk that a worker goes on leave no matter the gender, the whole point of discriminating goes away. Simple as that.

I am on paternity leave by choice. I had reached a limit in my last employment, I wanted do something on my own and my wife career was anyway going better than mine. So it just made sense to take some time off and help with my little one. At the end of the day, and for how cheesy as it sounds, this tie comes only once. And I really wished I had done it the first time around.

Was it a pleasant experience? Hell no, it has been really hard. Did I enjoy it? Yes of course.

Did I learn a lot? No.I could figure out already that being a full time parent and housewife is quite hard. But doing it for real, day in, day out, is a whole different matter. And It has taught me for sure a whole different level of respect for people that choose this path.

Ah, and multi-tasking. You think you multitask because you can read an email while talking on the phone and doing some accounting? When you have a 6 months daughter multitasking takes a whole different form, and level.

Patience? You better have a lot of it. If you don’t, You will learn it, believe me.

Which also that after this experience, I believe you are going to be a better employee. Actually I think sometimes I really long for one of those, long , hard day in the office. Compared to this, it’s holidays really.

Here is a brief recap of my typical day in the last few months.

Get up at 6 am with the baby, who is obviously already up.

Get her out of the room so that bread winning wife can sleep a little bit more.

Feed the girl, entertain her while doing breakfast, coffee(I don’t really function without coffee) change diapers wash the bum, and put a laundry load. When wife gets up and has breakfast open computer and apply in 7 minutes and 26 seconds to 2 jobs I saved the night before while wife notes nonchalantly that due to the Corona no way I am going to find a job, no chance in hell. Check price of coffee and see how much my 4 tons of Arabica blocked in a warehouse in Jurmala, Latvia are worth.If they are still there to begin with, that is.

Clean dishes on the fly with girl screaming in the baby carrier then feed the little monster while trying to get a bit shaved and dressed. Oh no now the girl is under my oversized hoodie (Appearance has suffered a bit. If you people without small children are asking why parents usually deteriorate their wardrobe, here is why) so now the girl is stuck under my hoodie and audibly unhappy about it.

So get hoodie out, get the little get girl in pram and rush off the house so breadwinner wife can get some work done since she is telecommuting and is disturbed by my and little girl noise. Walk around 2 hours while girl sleeps in pram while getting up to date on news and trying to dictate a blog post on WordPress but thanks to Italian accent, underground noise and a not very clever dictation software, think again about posting since seems written by a drunk Bulgarian farmer trying to express trading concepts in swahili.

And don’t stop walking or girl wakes up. And that’s not good for my already low productivity.

Run back home, fix some lunch and while girl and breadwinner eat sends another round of job applications.

Take baby, change her, wash the backside play with the little princess while hanging out the morning laundry and putting a second load.

Take baby out again to let breadwinner concentrate on useful things

Do groceries while baby sleeps in the pram and OH NO she is up, rush home, feed, organize dinner etc etc etc etc etc. When at 7 bread-winning wife is done can finally eat and go to the toilet for more than 5 minutes.

Yes, I am not making this up, this is how it is.

I received a call from a head-hunter the other day. Typical round of questions, one of which was: ”How good you are at multitasking?”.

The answer in my mind was: ”Come to my home. I will show you.”

Yes, it is tough. Yes it is worth it. And I believe everyone should do it. Especially people who do not understand how hard that life can be. And most of these people, are man.

So let’s end discrimination. Make parental leave mandatory for all.